


Pas de Deux

by SweetSorcery



Category: Shadow of a Doubt
Genre: Angst, Classic Movie, Classics, Drama, F/M, Film Noir, Hitchcock, Hurt/Comfort, Incest, Introspection, Rare Pairing, Romance, Soul Bond, Uncle-Niece Relationship, Uncle/Niece Incest, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-14
Updated: 2009-11-14
Packaged: 2017-10-02 16:06:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SweetSorcery/pseuds/SweetSorcery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're not just an uncle and a niece. Charlie knows him. And she knows she's the only one who can save him, especially from his own demons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pas de Deux

Charlie is lying in bed, smiling into the darkness. The merest glimmer of moonlight trickles through a gap in the curtains, catching on the emerald ring Uncle Charlie gave her earlier. She looks at it, sighing. She can't bear to take it off, even to sleep. It makes her breathless just to remember him sliding it onto her finger, looking at her the way he always does, like she's the most important thing in the world to him. It was so romantic, almost like an engagement. But there was something else in his eyes tonight. Something she hasn't seen before. Something unsettling.

She knows what she wishes it to be, but she's just being foolish. Her smile vanishes to be replaced by a frown. Suddenly, her wrists hurt, and she remembers what else he did to her. He didn't mean to hurt her, of course, and she had no business nosing around in things he wants to keep secret. Though she really thinks the two of them ought not to have secrets from each other.

She blushes. No, that wouldn't be fair to him. After all, she has a secret she doesn't want Uncle Charlie to know.

Closing her eyes, she thinks about him sleeping right next door. In her room. In her bed. She bites her lip, willing herself to sleep before she can become even more foolish and think about his head on her pillow.

* * *

It must be liberating, Charlie thinks, to be so entirely unconcerned with what people think of you. Uncle Charlie has always been unconventional, of course, and he's never needed to go out of his way to flatter or ingratiate himself with anyone; people always ended up liking him anyhow.

She smiles to herself. No, it doesn't matter at all that he was so rude at the bank earlier. It was kind of funny, really. Sometimes, she wishes she could be like that herself. But she isn't, is she?

* * *

Each time she wakes up, she feels more tired than the last. But she keeps going right back to sleep, telling herself that maybe, the ugliness of life can simply pass her by. Perhaps, if she refuses to participate, it will all go away before she wakes up again. While she keeps sleeping, drifting out of reality again and again, she can pretend her world isn't crumbling, that Uncle Charlie is exactly who he ever was - or who she thought him to be. She can pretend Jack Graham is a liar, that her trip to the library was merely a dream, the newspaper representing some nightmarish fear of hers.

Nightmares. She's having a lot of those. You can't sleep all night and all day with things like that newspaper article and that waltz running through your head and not have nightmares. Each time she wakes from one, she's clutching her throat, certain she can feel Uncle Charlie's hands there. But then she remembers that it was some other woman in the dream - a woman who thought she had found love, but instead, death had found her. Charlie feels feverish, and wants to just go back to sleep. She wants to never wake up again.

But she does, this time from a dream where she was dancing with Uncle Charlie. He was spinning her round and round to the Merry Widow Waltz until she felt sick, laughing at her frightened pleas to stop. Oh, it was terrible. She loves to dance; he was the one who taught her, a few years ago.

She can tell from the light outside the closed curtain that it must be afternoon, and she reaches towards the bedside table and picks up the framed photo. She took it to Ann's room with her, because she was afraid, knowing how much Uncle Charlie hates being photographed, that he might throw it away. She runs a finger along the frame. Then, because she can't resist, she traces the little boy's face - a cherub cheek, the Cupid's bow of his mouth, the neatly combed hair. Has he ever truly been as angelic as he looks in this photograph? Was it that awful accident when he was so young that changed him?

She wonders whether her uncle keeps a childhood photo of her tucked away like a treasure. He probably does - one thing she's sure of is that he loves her - but as she traces the little face, she's quite sure he never had to wipe tears from the glass.

* * *

When she goes downstairs for dinner, she at last feels ready to face the world. To face him, even. She's made a decision about what to do, because she has to do something. She can't simply go on pretending that it's got nothing to do with her. She's going to hint that she knows about him, will even tell him outright that he has to leave, if she has to. But he's not going to make it easy.

"There she is. There's my girl!" he greets her, the moment she opens the door to the dining room, and he's smiling, looking as if he hasn't seen her in months.

Her heart skips a few beats, and she falters, but she must go through with this, she simply must. For his own good. And mother's, too. But especially for his. Because if he stays here, the police will get him, and who'll protect him if not her?

Calling on a strength she never knew she possessed, she takes a deep breath and begins to talk about one of her nightmares - this one she didn't actually have, because despite everything, she could never be happy seeing him on a train which takes him away from her.

* * *

She is standing in the garden, still feeling his grip on her shoulders. Everything which means 'home' to her is happening inside. Father is carrying a laughing Ann - who for once is acting like the child she is - up the stairs. Mother is talking to Uncle Charlie, asking after her and sounding so dreadfully worried. And she can't go in, she just can't.

For a moment, she wonders if this is how Uncle Charlie feels all the time - like someone standing on the outside, not a part of the kinds of normal, everyday things she's grown so used to that they started boring her. He said coming here was his last chance. Being a part of this home, this family, was his last chance, then.

And she, of all people, is trying to take that away from him. But she has to, doesn't she? If she only knew whether he could change. Would it ever be safe for them all if he stayed? She'd never know, not until it was too late. And even if he could, she would always know what she knew about him now. What he had admitted to her. Those terrible things he's done. She would never be able to forget, and it would always stand between them. And she would be helping him keep his terrible secret. She would be his accomplice, lying for him, becoming, after a while, as much of an outsider as he is. Would she become as cynical as he is, and mock everything she holds dear now, distrusting everyone? She would have to, in time, wouldn't she? Just to be sure his secret stayed safe.

She doesn't think she has the strength to offer him more than those few days he asked for. She wishes she did, but she doesn't. Not while she lacks the strength to even go inside and face that happy, blissfully ignorant family of hers. She doesn't even have the strength to keep from sobbing out here in front of the house like a hurt child.

* * *

The sun is hot on her back as she stands in the front door, but inside her, it feels like cruel winter. She's looking up the stairs, and when Uncle Charlie turns around and meets her eyes, something changes between them. Because despite the news about that other man the police were hunting, because even though they might stop coming after Uncle Charlie now, she can no more unknow what she knows than he can undo what he has done. And they've never been able to lie to each other; it stands there between them like a wall a hundred feet high, and they both know it just looking at each other.

She only wishes the deep, abiding link she's always felt to him had grown weaker. Or does she? No, she doesn't really. It's because of that link that he's her responsibility. She's closer to him than anyone ever was or will be. It's up to her to bring him to justice and save him from himself.

She just hopes she will live long enough to do so.

* * *

Jack Graham's car is disappearing down the street, and Charlie watches him leave, feeling another chapter of her life closing.

Charlie always had a picture in her mind of the man she would marry one day. He would understand her so well, there would hardly be any need for them to speak; he would be handsome, unconventional, strong, and exciting; he would be smarter than any of the foolish boys she went to school with. She was very young indeed when she decided he would be just like Uncle Charlie.

She draws in a sharp breath, feeling deeply uncomfortable. She tries to think about Jack Graham. Jack is in love with her. He's the kind of man her parents would want her to marry. He's probably the kind of man any parent would want for a son-in-law. Yet Charlie can't conceive of spending the rest of her life with him, or anyone like him. Jack is happy to be 'just an average guy from an average family'. Charlie knows she will never fall in love with anyone average. She's looked up to someone her entire life. Someone so far beyond average in every way, it has taken any humbleness out of her.

But she's no longer a child, and it's no longer all right for her to idolise Uncle Charlie the way she used to when she was little, and not only because he doesn't deserve idolatry after what he did. No, that's all gone.

But she doesn't think she will ever stop loving him.

* * *

Charlie is trembling. She knows now, without a doubt, that he's responsible for the broken stair. He's not denying it, even as he stands there, telling her that he won't leave, that he's going to settle in and look after them all.

"The smartest thing for you to do is to be friends with me, Charlie."

Friends. She might laugh if she could remember how. No, 'friends' is something they can never be. They've always been so much more than that.

When she tells him that she'll kill him if he doesn't leave, she means it. She knows she would go through with it if she had to, and judging from the look in his eyes, he knows it too. It's only for her to know that she can hardly bear the thought of it.

Strangely enough, he smiles at her then. They're standing so close. To an outsider, they must look like a couple returning from a late night at the pictures, unwilling to say goodnight and part ways. But it's not romance they're talking about out here, on the back landing, with the moon shining down on them and Uncle Charlie's eyes caressing her face with something like admiration - almost as if he's proud of her for having the nerve to threaten him.

Oh, what's wrong with her? She knows what he's done. She can't tell anyone, he's right about that, but at least knowing what he did, what he is, should have destroyed anything else she felt for him, shouldn't it? Why is there a part of her that understands he has to try and kill her? And stranger yet - why is it so easy for that part to co-exist with the one that cannot stop trembling when he smiles at her?

* * *

She's running out of time, she knows that now. If he hadn't tried to kill her a second time, she wouldn't be trying to get hold of Jack Graham - dull, average, dependable Jack Graham. Except he isn't as dependable as all that, because he can't be found anywhere, this very first time she needs his help. This annoys her greatly - she's trying to betray the man she loves to him, and she can't even get hold of him. It is then that she realizes there's no point even trying.

This is about her and Uncle Charlie. She remembers her thoughts outside the house that night, that first terrible night when he begged her to give him a few more days before making him leave - she thought then that, if she let him stay, she would become his accomplice, and soon an outsider like he is. And she realises it's already happening.

She's keeping his terrible secret and hiding things from her own family. She's even starting to get angry and hateful like he is. But after all, why did Jack give her half a dozen phone numbers if she can't get hold of him with any of them? And why can't her own family, her own mother - whom she's trying to protect from having her weak heart broken - tell that something's very wrong? Uncle Charlie tried to kill her twice, and no one has any idea. But they're all there, all the time. Why don't they see what's happening between the two of them? Why don't they do something?

'You're the head of your family, Charlie, anyone can see that.' She remembers his words to her in the bar. His implication that she's brighter and more worldly than the rest of her family irked her then. She doesn't want to think of herself as better than them in any way. It would be arrogant and unkind, and maybe she simply expects too much - after all, it's a hard habit to break, idolising Uncle Charlie. It's a heaven from which a fall is a very long way down.

But she's fallen, and she has to follow through. And she doesn't need anyone's help - not her family's, and certainly not Jack's. Determined, she hurries up the stairs and into her bedroom, where she starts rummaging through Uncle Charlie's luggage. She just knows he's keeping that ring somewhere. It's the only solid evidence she has, and she's going to find it. And when he sees it, he'll have to leave. He'll just have to.

When she walks down the stairs a little while later, just as he's proposing a toast - he waited for her to do it, his eyes fix on the ring where it sparkles like a warning on her right hand. And then he announces his departure the very next morning. It's what she wanted, what has to be, but just like her poor, ignorant mother is doing, Charlie wants to break down and cry.

* * *

It was inevitable, she supposes. She knew it when he held her back after the children got off the train. She knew he would keep her with him until it was moving out of the station. She knows too much about him, and here, on a train picking up more and more speed by the second, he can so easily make it look like an accident. And she's so tired of fighting. It's tempting, for a moment, to let him do it without a fight.

But when she finds herself pressed hard against him, one of his murdering hands over her mouth and one arm around her in a mockery of a lover's embrace, she starts to struggle. Because her death won't save him. He is what he is, and he'll do it all again, and one day, someone else will find out. Someone who doesn't love him and won't try to protect him from his own mistakes.

But she could do that. She's his only chance, if only he would see it. And suddenly, she knows that she's not the one who's frightened. She knows exactly what to do, but in his fear of capture, he can't see it. Can't see that he needs her.

He's sliding the door open, telling her, "Not yet. Let it get a little faster. Just a little faster."

She looks up at him, her eyes wide and pleading, willing him to understand what she's telling him. What she's offering. And in case he's forgotten how to read in her eyes, she relaxes in his hold minutely, enough to confuse him.

And he looks down at her then, meeting her eyes, still covering her mouth, and he looks startled - like a sleepwalker, suddenly waking up and finding himself in an unfamiliar house, surrounded by strangers.

"Oh, Charlie," he whispers. He reaches across for the door handle, pulling it shut with force, and his arm is between the once again secured exit and her. And he blinks at her, looking dazed and horrified. His hand slides from her mouth, fingertips grazing her cheek. And he looks as frightened as she's ever felt. He sighs then and draws her close, wrapping both arms around her properly this time.

Charlie clings to him while she comes apart. She's sobbing into the lapel of his jacket, squeezing her burning eyes shut against the world. Of all the things she should notice at that moment, it's his scent, that familiar aftershave he always wears, which begins to calm her down little by little. And his voice, as it brokenly starts talking to her.

"I'm sorry, Charlie. I'm so sorry. I never wanted to harm you. I couldn't have lived with myself if I had." His voice grows soft and husky. "I meant it when I said you're what I love most in the world."

His breath stirs the hair tucked behind her ear, making her shiver. Her heart is still pounding from residual fear, but the nature of her fear has changed entirely. No longer afraid that he will kill her, she is suddenly afraid what else he might do, and how she will respond. So she merely holds on, not wanting to decide yet, waiting. His arms are warm and comforting around her, and those hands she's grown so afraid of are on her back, making soothing circles. They are as gentle as they've ever been. And then she feels his breath warm against the shell of her ear, and his lips are there, brushing the sensitive ridges and making her shiver.

"Uncle Charlie," she gasps, but makes no attempt to push him away. She feels his lips forming a kiss against the lobe of her ear, and then below it, and her skin flushes under the caress.

"We're so much alike, Charlie," her uncle murmurs huskily. "I know you don't want me to stop."

She closes her eyes, shivering. No, she doesn't want him to stop. She feels as if she's floating, or maybe as if they're dancing. They are certainly moving, and she realises he's slowly guiding her to his empty compartment. And she doesn't want to stop him. And then the door clicks shut behind them, and they're completely alone.

The last few times she was alone with him, she was afraid for her life. Even then, there was that crackle of electricity between them, but she was on her guard. Now... now she allows it to drop a little as she looks up at him.

"You've always loved me, little Charlie, haven't you?" he asks softly. He suddenly looks more like that angelic boy in the photo than ever.

Or maybe she's simply gone crazy too. She nods silently, her eyes drifting shut when he cups her face. She feels his long, elegant fingers sliding into her hair, combing it back and out of the way of his mouth, so he can kiss the rosy skin of her cheek - flushed and hot and still wet with tears.

Charlie hears herself whimpering pitifully.

"Except you're not little anymore," Uncle Charlie murmurs, his fine lips and warm breath caressing her skin.

"No," she agrees breathlessly. She hasn't felt like a little girl around him in a long time. She knows the way she feels is supposed to be wrong; folks back home would call it immoral and shun them both. It's so easy, so very easy, to become an outsider. Weighed up against murder, shouldn't any kind of love be good and right?

He draws back a little, his hand beginning to slide down her neck, but he flinches and quickly diverts its path so that his fingertips caress her parted lips. She knows he must feel them quivering against his skin.

"Definitely not little anymore," he says roughly, pulls her hard against himself, and takes her mouth in a kiss she can feel throughout her entire body.

He doesn't know restraint, and in this, she doesn't want him to. She'll decide this when she can think again, but while he's ravaging her mouth, she knows only that this is what her life has led up to. This is right. If they can have this - if they can have each other - then maybe, she can save him.

Through the pounding of her heart, and the breathless gasps they both take between hungry kisses neither seems able to stop, Charlie thinks she hears a knocking at the door. She can't seem to care, and when she hears Mrs Potter's voice twittering something about Uncle Charlie shutting her out, she merely wishes her away. She lifts her arms, wraps them around his neck, and draws him back towards the bunk bed to distract him from the interruption.

But she needn't have worried. He knows nothing outside of her embrace, the intensity of his kisses not abating in the least, and eventually, Mrs Potter gives up, having no idea what a lucky escape she had.

Charlie lowers herself to the bed, and he follows, leaning over her, with one hand caressing her face.

"Stay with me, Charlie," he implores. "I need you."

"Yes," she sighs, relieved beyond words that he understands.

"We'll tell your parents that getting stuck on the train with me was really quite fortunate." He's making plans, his eyes not leaving hers for a moment. "We'll say you're going to stay with me for a while, see something of the world. They trust me to keep you safe."

Charlie nods. She finds it hard to speak, with him so very, very close, but she manages to ask, "It'll be a long while, won't it?"

He smiles. His thumb traces her bottom lip. "A very long while." Then he grows serious. "Charlie, dear Charlie. I mean it. I do need you. You're the only one I can trust. The only one I've ever loved. I can stand the ugliness of the world if I have you at my side."

"I've always been at your side," she says softly. "And I always will be." She touches his cheek, smiling at him. "I'll be your home, dear. You'll never need to stand on the outside again."

He looks at her then as if every wish he's ever had has come true. And he returns her smile, looking exactly like the man she fell in love with an eternity ago, and leans down to kiss her again. And the last thing she hears before the pounding of her heart blots out even the rattling of the train on the tracks, is her name - _their_ name - gasped into her open mouth.

THE END

  



End file.
